All the Missing Girls(54)

Perhaps it was because they sensed a kindred spirit or saw something inside me, like what I saw in Hannah Pardot—the feeling that she knew more because she once was one of us.

Maybe they knew I had seen darker things. That I would understand.

Or perhaps they would sense that I am an excellent keeper of secrets.

I am.



* * *



I ENDED THE CALL when Everett’s dinner arrived, already feeling he was unreachable, in a world too far away. With Tyler, it had been the opposite. I’d had to delete his number from my phone to keep from calling him on impulse after a drink at the bar, after a bad date, and especially after a relatively good one.

But one second off the phone with Everett and all I could feel was the distance between us and him turning insubstantial, a figment I had conjured up out of hope that something so good could happen to me.

I slept fitfully, until I gave up. Too many thoughts swirling through my mind, too many names. I thought of anyone who’d have reason to break into this house, to look through Dad’s things or to rifle through Daniel’s old room. The list spanned ten years. I wasn’t sure I was solving what had happened then or what had happened now. Maybe Dad was right, that time wasn’t real. Just a thing we created to move on. Just a label to make sense of things.



* * *



“IF I WERE A monster,” Corinne had told us on the front porch with the lanterns swinging and the shadows dancing, “I’d pretend to be human.”

Bailey had laughed, and Daniel had smiled. She’d walked up to him, taking his chin in her hand, turning his head side to side, squinting as she stared into his eyes. “No,” she said to him, “human through and through.”

She looked at Bailey next, running her fingers through her long black hair as she did it, which was because Daniel was there and she always put on a show. Her nose touched Bailey’s, and Bailey didn’t flinch. We’d learned to let her have her way. Go along for the ride, and it turns out all right. There’s a plan that only Corinne knows, and we’re a part of it.

“Hmm,” she said. “No, no, not here, but he’s been here. He visits sometimes. What does he make you do, Bailey? Does he make you kiss other people’s boyfriends?” That was you, Corinne, I thought but didn’t say. Neither did Bailey. “Does he make you like it?” Her hand was on Bailey’s back, under her shirt, her body pressed to Corinne’s, and Daniel’s eyes had gone dark and hazy, under a spell. “Does he make you dream of him at night? Of boys who aren’t yours?”

She stepped back, breaking the spell. Bailey blinked twice, and Daniel walked into the house.

Corinne smiled like nothing had changed. She took my chin, looked deep into my eyes. I could see myself reflected in her pupils from the lantern swinging overhead. She blinked and pressed her cheek against mine, facing away from Bailey, and whispered in my ear, “There you are.”





The Day Before





DAY 8

Now that we’d emptied the garage, I could see why Daniel had tried to convert it years earlier: windows on both sides and light streaming through, exposed beams inside a steepled roof; a corner tucked away for storage that would be perfect for a bathroom. I stood at the entrance, staring at the unfinished walls, lost in my memory of Daniel and Dad, Tyler and his father, working together out here in the early-June mornings ten years ago. Before everything changed.

The low rumble of an engine cut off, and I backed out of the garage.

“Nic?” a deep voice called from across the yard. One I didn’t recognize at first. It tickled my memory, pulling at threads while I tried to place it.

I spun around to find a man down by the road, sliding off a motorcycle, the sun behind him, his face in shadows. I walked toward him, my hand shielding my eyes, until he became less shadow, more person. Where his sleeves ended, dark writing began—scripted and curling—all the way down his thumbs.

“Jackson?” I asked, still too far to see his face.

He nodded. “Yeah, hey. Hi. Sorry to drop by like this. I’m looking for Tyler.”

“He’s not here.”

I stood at the edge of the road and watched as the words on his arm seemed to ripple when he ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair. Erase the tattoos, crop the hair, change his clothes, and he was classically all-American. Strong jaw and defined cheekbones, broad shoulders, lean frame. There was a reason he was Corinne’s. Just one version nested inside another now. He had a tremor in his left hand as he brought a cigarette to his mouth, assessing me through the smoke. “You sure?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Do you see his truck?” I looked over my shoulder, cupped my hands around my mouth. “Hey, Tyler, you here?” I turned back to face him, the smoke more pungent now. “I’m sure.”

“It’s not a joke,” he said. “I’ve been looking for him. And I’m not the only one. Haven’t seen him since Friday.” And today was Monday. Seven days since Annaleise was reported missing.

“What makes you think I have?”

The heels of his black boots dug into the dirt as he leaned against his bike. “I work at a bar, Nic. Where people talk. A bar that Tyler lives above.”

“I haven’t seen him, Jackson. I swear it. Not since Friday.”